Manu Sharma, Vice President, Mobile Business, at Samsung India, said that the company saw a transition with its earlier Tizen phones, and now expects Z2 smartphone to do the same.Danish Khan&Gulveen Aulakh | ETTelecom | August 23, 2016, 17:56 IST

NEW DELHI: Korea's Samsung expects the Reliance Jio Infocomm bundling data offer and sub-Rs 5,000 pricing will entice more feature phone users to switch to the latest Tizen OS-powered smartphone, Z2. Manu Sharma, Vice President, Mobile Business, at Samsung India, said that the company saw a transition with its earlier Tizen phones, and now expects Z2 smartphone to do the same. Edited excerpts

What is the response for Tizen-powered smartphones in India.

We launched our ​first Tizen smartphone, Z1, in January last year. First 6 months, we garnered 1 million units. It got good acceptance in the market, therefore we brought another phone, Z3 , in October. That did well.

We felt an opportunity in terms of 4G market opening up by ​bringing devices under Rs 5,000 price point. Only 4% of all devices sold under Rs 5,000 are 4G devices, and with a huge base of 550 million users. It gives a great opportunity for us to tap into.

We tied up ​with ​Jio for bringing ​the ​fun aspect because entertainment is one of the needs of consumers. With Jio ​Beats, and Jio On demand, consumer can access music and videos. These apps are developed under a close collaboration of Jio and Tizen engineers over last few months.We also developed a separate app for basic banking transactions. Users can check bank balance, generate mini statement and transfer upto Rs 5000. We are working various public and private banks across the country.

Do you expect feature phone users to migrate to smartphone like Tizen Z2?

Z2 is the being first launched in India ahead of any other global market. We saw a transition with our earlier Tizen phones. We have also seen transition to our J series of smartphones. Z2 is ​a ​good proposition for customers, given ​the ​4G capability and ​the ​Jio data offer.We expect to sell more units of Z2 than the old Z series models.

Do you expect that Z2 pricing will change shape of the market?

We expect a lot more feature phone users coming on to smartphone​s​. It’s clearly expanding the smartphone market with this offering.

Can this offering cannablise sale of Reliance’s Lyf handsets?

Our focus is to work with them and bring convenience and relevance to consumers. The strategy is to work with consumers rather talking about competition.​Do you expect Tizen to become ​a ​more ​​popular OS in India?

Our majority of ​the ​portfolio is Android. For us, Android is an important partnership but at the same time Tizen allows us to explore new territories and help​s​ us in learning which we can use in other devices.

Tizen plays an important role since it’s an open source platform and is a flexible OS. We are able to customize looking at the need of feature phone users in terms user interface and a lot of functionality.

It is a very powerful OS which connects different devices from wearable to automobiles to connected homes.